Executives are expecting the piece to be similar to The New York Times' 2015 investigation into Amazon, which described a hyper-competitive and "bruising" workplace where employees were said to be held to "unreasonably high" standards, said the sources, who spoke on the condition anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Such a piece threatens to sap morale at a company that has been widely portrayed as the envy of the media industry, given the lucrative six- and seven-figure salaries it offers to employees, to say nothing of the hundreds of millions it offers to showrunners.

A Netflix spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Spokespeople for The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to requests for comment.